


cyrene

by Askance



Series: Mashiach [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Implied Future Character Death, M/M, Mild Implied Incest, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Stigmata
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the Mobius strip of losing him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cyrene

This is the Mobius strip of losing him.

And, more truthfully, this is the way the science goes wrong—this is your brother holding up red Chinese scissors and cutting the strip at the place where it twists, and this is you, finding him in the torn fibres where the blades went through. You both have lived your lives in a queasy cycle of knowing that there will be deaths but also waking, that eventually someone or other will roll away your ragged stones and bring you back again, lifted up by the point in the middle of your foreheads to stand on two feet. Two Lazari, better at turning out the lights than blinking in the sun. But he’s cutting the strip even though it’s difficult to close scissors when you’ve had a nail shoved through your hand; he’s managing it. He is saying, _enough of this. Our lives should not be see-saws; this world sure as hell is not a playground._ This is you, holding his flat life in your hand like something Atropos let drop out of her ledger. It’s smearing golden blood on your fingers. It’s the end.

This is you, Simon of Cyrene in the gravel on the byway, drinking beer and eyeing the bandages on his hands with fear hammering at your ribcage like a dozen carpenters. Your dad was a builder—he sculpted himself a piss-poor excuse for a childhood and laid it on your shoulders, and this is you seeing it spread out behind you like creation, every mile marker a forgotten birthday, and your brother standing in front of it, staring at his hands. You’re thinking, _this can’t be right_. You’re thinking there are at least three more beers in that cooler in the trunk and wondering whether or not it’s worth it to douse his wounds in alcohol. Can glory be infected? Or is the glory the disease, like the chicken pox he had at seven, or the influenza that ruined two report cards that one awful brazen spring? This is him, telling you that he is happy, and this is you, calling him a liar to his face, and this is his shoulders bowing, and these, look, these are his eyes looking off at a point on the horizon that is not your mouth, and this is your sudden knowing that he’s looking at death. These are his features chiselled out of sunlight and milkweed and the shadows of the dandelions on the hill. The road to Calvary is two-lane asphalt. It is time to start walking.

This is the Shroud of Turin in every one of your dreams for two weeks straight, and the clothes you’ve worn on your backs for years going to ruin with his blood. This is you praying with your forehead against a portico pillar for God to take His forgiveness back, promising that you will sell the souls of saints to make Him hate you, rip His favour away like you’ve stung Him. This is your brother falling to his knees while his skin ruptures and the carpet soaks and two dark footprints seep into the mat, toeprints pointed like compass needles in the direction of Moving On. This is you, Veronica’s veil, hoping for a parallel and a keepsake so that you won’t forget his face. This is him, smiling, and this is you, wanting to punch his teeth in, wanting to kiss him so hard that his mouth bleeds too. This is the Mobius strip of giving in, the fistfight you don’t have, the gentleness with which you lay his body on the bed and kiss his collarbone as many times as you can for fear he will forget how to feel your love. Here you are, offering yourself quietly to God on the bathroom floor, making yourself a sad excuse for a sacrifical lamb and knowing damn well you’re neither small enough nor pure enough to be one. Here you are imagining, wildly, that you could take his blood and paint your battered doorjamb to keep the Angel of Death at bay.

This is you, Magdalene, kissing his feet. These are his fingertips beneath your chin, and now you are starting to wish more than anything that you could understand the machinations of his breathing, and starting to wish you’d seen it earlier—the reason for the way his shoulders slope.

Here you are in the small of the night. Here is your brother, Saint Survivor, taking up his Atlas cross, and here you are, centurion, whispering: _truly this man is a Son of God,_ this carpenter boy who only ever learned to nail himself together because you showed him how to hold the hammer, this dilapidated savior. _Redeem first, die painful later_. You’ve had the Mobius strip all wrong, all this time—he died forever ago, and he is only living now, reminding you both of the colour of his heart. This is you plunging the red Chinese scissors into the hole inside his palm to pin him to the bed. This is him, closing his eyes in ecstasy. You are too late. Always and forever, you are too late, but you have followed him to the ends of the earth, and you are not about to stop now. This is the manner in which you are letting him go—burning the ends of the strip to ash, breathing down his incense smoke, telling the story backwards, kissing myrrh into his neck, swaddling the body. This place is too big. There has always been too much room at the inn.

This time, you know, no one wants a resurrection. You are the Roman soldier keeping watch outside the tomb, and no wailing women, no Arimathean, no blazing angel will scare you away. This is you spitting on God because his holiness is free to go, but the flesh is yours. Someone must keep vigil through the earthquake and the rending of the veil. Someone must be here, to greet him on the morning of the end of the world, to kiss his mouth, to anoint his head. Here you are.

**Author's Note:**

> This series belongs in part to Casey, whose contributions can be read [here](http://whiskyandoldspice.tumblr.com/fanfiction). 
> 
> Simon of Cyrene was famously recruited to help Jesus carry his cross to Calvary when the burden became too heavy.


End file.
